Introduction
Survival of today’s business environment requires strategic leadership. Therefore, in order to gain some competitiveness in the environment it is important that each business organization must have its unique form of strategic leadership.
For that matter, strategic leadership refers to the potential of the manager to utilize good strategic plans in the employees’ management so as to influence them to achieve organizational change. Besides, the main objective of strategic leadership is to attain strategic productivity. Moreover, in order to have strategic leadership that is functional, it is relatively important to promote inventiveness and creativity in the organization in order to realize its goals and objectives.
In relation to today’s business environment, it is imperative to acknowledge that it is characterized by stiff competition. Consequently, it is therefore important for business organizations to have proactive and reactive strategic plans that seek to combat the competition.
Nevertheless, it is important that for these strategic plans to be implemented properly there is need to have strategic leadership in the organization in order to provide the much needed leadership. Strategic leadership is relevant in terms of providing vision and to ensure that business’ objectives and mission is attained. Therefore, this paper discusses approaches to strategic leadership as a way of surviving in today’s business environment
Survival in today’s business environment requires strategic leadership
Survival of business in the current times requires strategic leadership. However, in order to have strategic leadership, there is need to craft effective and efficient strategic plans to drive businesses in a stiff competitive environment. For that matter, it is necessary to adopt an appropriate approach to strategic leadership to assure this survival (Watson & Wooldridge, 2005).
Trends in strategic planning that are currently being witnessed can inform several possible scenarios for the future. As earlier discussed, competition in the operating environment demands approaches to planning that will be able to craft and design strategies for organizations that are capable of making them bullet proof in terms of impending competition in the environment.
Therefore, for businesses to continuously maintain their operating space and market in the environment, it is relatively important to come up with scenarios that can be used in crafting and designing strategic plans for the organizations in order to give them a competitive edge in the environment (Mintzberg & Lampel, 1999).
However, these scenarios need to be proactive and reactive in order to make the organization maintain its vivaciousness. For that matter, it is relatively important to carry out trend analysis in order to predict what is likely to happen in the future. Therefore, it is important to have knowledge of what is happening currently in the environment by considering trends in the sector, country and the entire globe. As a result, scanning of the environment using several tools becomes compulsory in the effort of getting to understand the trend.
For instance, PESTE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Environmental) analysis aid in identification of different forces in control in a given environment. This provides a benchmark for strategic planning in the organization. As a result, the strategies formulated provide strategic leadership that is capable of enabling business organizations to survive in the stiff competition in the environment.
Moreover, it is emerging that competition is becoming inevitable in any business environment. Therefore, for any organization to survival in today’s business environment, there is need to have strategic leadership that is capable of identifying threats and opportunities in order to integrate them in planning their strategies. However, in identification of opportunities, the leadership should not use one single visionary view but it should use multiple views that provide bridge of opportunities in a watertight competitive environment.
Furthermore, many businesses are usually in the financial quagmire due to impending competition from both international and regional players. The financial problems usually emanate from reduction of goods or service costs which the organizations are forced to undertake due stiff competition in the environment. As a result of these, business leadership should be able to apply systems thinking approach in designing strategic plans to be able to address these problems.
This type of planning supports entrepreneurial strategic plans which are key in revolutionizing the organization. For that matter, to have a strong strategic leadership, organizations must embrace information communication technologies (ICT) in all of their operational activities. Excellent adoption of ICT services by a business is likely to promote effectiveness and efficiency in service delivery. This is a panacea to business survival in the environment.
In addition, strategic leadership entails increasing revenue for business organizations. For that reason, the leadership must apply sound marketing strategies that should use modern ICT services to be able to target both corporate and individual clients in order to guarantee its revenue inflow. In respect to businesses that provide ancillary services to customers, plans should be in place to improve and increase their services. This guarantees organizations to be strategic leaders in business operations.
Moreover, in order to survive in the business environment, there is need to have effective strategic responses that are geared towards addressing human resources and related scenarios to avoid their negative impacts on the organization’s business performance. Therefore, strategic leadership must have strategies in place that manage talents in order to guarantee continuous improvement.
Nonetheless, it is acknowledged by Chaharbaghi (2007) that talent management needs to be based on identifying, selecting and nurturing these key performers.
In addition, there is also need for sourcing, development and allocation of replacements of the key personnel. As well, allocation of required resources to key talents based on their potential value to the organization also forms part of talent management strategies. The management must use this to strategically position organization in the business environment for better survival.
Furthermore, businesses should also appreciate and use diversification strategies in their corporate portfolio in order to survive in the environment. Strategic leadership should allow corporate units liberty to venture into new business entities provided their new ventures comply with the stipulated threshold given by the parent organization (Watson, 2001).
Nonetheless, this should be taken to ensure that shareholders interests are taken into account. This can be done by ensuring that the value of corporate share on the stock market is competitively maintained in order to guarantee shareholders value in terms of dividends.
On the other hand, it is considered that communication is the most crucial function in management of any organization. Accordingly, improved communication results into improved performance of the organization both internally and externally.
However, for this to be accomplished there is need to develop better communication structures that are able to address both internal and external needs of the company. For instance, good internal communication structure will help to prevent issues that could lead to conflict in the organization. As a result, proper communication strategies serve as a proper way of achieving business survival in the operating environment.
For that matter, it is imperative that a business that wants to survive in a competitive environment should prioritize communication system in its operational structures. It should value communication among its structure of management and enable its workforce to freely communicate irrespective of their level in the organization.
For this reason, strategic leadership should assume flat structure of management since traditional tall bureaucratic system of management is a recipe of communication breakdown (Vaiman, 2008). According to Robert (1998), flat system of management have few levels which implies that both upward and downward communication are simplified and as a result, there is always less distortion and inaccuracy in the message relayed. This is a recipe to business survival.
Besides, balanced score cards is another approach that strategic leadership can use in its business operations in order to maintain its survival in a competitive environment. These include; identification of new opportunities in the company processes, products and services.
However, for this to be achieved, several metrics have to be put in place. These metrics include clients’ satisfaction which can be established through evaluation of their feedbacks in relation to products and services (Bryson et.al, 2007). For that matter, continued satisfaction of clients’ needs guarantee continued improvement of the business which means continued survival in the business environment.
However, business strategic leadership must also apply operational process implementation of the balanced scorecards to bring forth the survival required. Just like its formulation, implementation process must follow defined approach to achieve the desired result.
Nonetheless, it is important to have collaboration, cooperation and coordination in the implementation process. According to Bryson (2011), implementation of strategies acts as a transition from their planning phase where they are incorporated in different sub systems of the company to bring the desired value.
With respect to business organization, collaboration, cooperation and coordination are crucial in the effort of achieving the desired outcomes as intended in the company’s strategic plans.
Therefore, there is need for the management and the entire stakeholders of any business to practice these values in order to realize effectiveness and efficiency. Nevertheless, it is postulated by Choe and Roehl (2007) that collaboration, cooperation and coordination in the implementation process of any organization help to achieve competitive survival in the operating environment.
Besides, in order to attain survival in the business environment, it is relatively important to apply management commitment in strategic leadership. The management of any organization has the sole responsibility to ensure quality improvement. They should do this by ensuring that the required resources are availed to relevant stakeholders involved in the business processes. In this respect, there are several initiatives that the management must ensure to achieve the desired continuous improvement.
This can achieved through formulation of improvement teams which involves senior managers of the organization. According to Elbanna and Younies (2008) there should be several improvement teams that should be in place to ensure the implementation process of strategic plans. These teams should comprise the senior managers in order to have their executive support.
Furthermore, for strategic leadership, it is imperative that business organizations adopt participative approach during implementation stage of their strategic plans. According to Choe and Roehl (2007), participative approach helps to attain continuous improvement of organization since all stakeholders are at liberty to give their personal views.
This can be accomplished through provision of a suggestion box where people would provide their suggestions to the implementation teams. The suggestion box provides a platform for all stakeholders in the organization to provide their voice in the implementation process towards attaining environmental competitiveness.
According to Holmberg and Cummings (2009) forming powerful guiding coalitions in the implementation process of the strategies is one of the best ways that strategic leadership can use in business for their survival. This step is important since it helps to convince several stakeholders in the organization the necessity of change. However, this can easily be accomplished through strong leadership that must be supported by all key members of the organization.
Therefore, organizations are required to identify good leaders who are supposed to serve as true crusaders of implementation of strategies. Additionally, it is relatively important for these leaders to win emotional commitment of strategic people in the organization. It is also important to concentrate on team building efforts so as to have a strong change coalition (Elbanna, 2008). By building strong coalition teams, it serves as one way of empowering other people to implement strategies.
Strategic management model for competitive survival of any organization must seek to establish competitive advantage in a sustained manner. However, for a continuous competitive advantage to be established, it is necessary that strategic leadership should create a value strategy that is not being implemented by potential competitors in the environment.
Nonetheless, it is also important that an organization strategic leadership must create value chain envy. This entails creating a value, capturing this value and later protecting it for the entry and integration into the market. According to David and David (2003), it is believed that when the value share that is captured is higher than value share that is created then envy of the value chain will be protected.
Choe and Roehl (2007) postulated that value chain theory is pivotal in creating a strong competitive advantage in a business environment. Therefore, it is relatively important to acknowledge that any organization that seeks to establish its strong competitive advantage needs to create value and then appropriating the value for a competitive purpose.
Moreover, it is well understood that organizations in the same industry usually compete when they have the same value system. For that reason, for organizations to strongly survive in the operating environment, they ought to create a totally different value system that should give them a completely different value system in the environment to ensure that they remain the market leader.
On the other hand, it relatively important to protect the value chain in order to prevent competitive imitation by the possible competitors. For that matter, strategic leadership can only ward off competition imitation by adopting models that appear repellant to potential competitors (Elbanna, 2008).
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be opined that in the current times, competition in business environment is on the increase. This is so since the market has been liberalized and even those businesses that used to enjoy monopoly are also faced with stiff competition. Therefore, strategic plans of each business remain to be the only panacea for their survival.
However, it is also believed that strategic plans are not an end to themselves. For that matter, in order to successfully survive in the business environment, it is relatively important to have good strategic leadership in place in order to guarantee realization of business vision and mission thus facilitating survival (Elbanna & Younies, 2008).
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